Teen rapper Kitty Pryde returns as ‘Kitty’ with a sparkly, grown-up new track

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing.

Kitty Pryde may have been forced—presumably—to change her stage name to just plain “Kitty,” but absolutely nothing about her stoned suburban rap style has changed since her 2012 breakout hit, “OK Cupid,” and that’s, like, a totally good thing. In the past few months, the fluky bedroom rapper graduated high school, moved from Florida to New York, fell in love, and managed to write a new EP, The D.A.I.S.Y. Rage, due out Jan. 31. She’s also garnered the attention of rappers like Danny Brown, worked with Sufjan Stevens, and gotten written up in The New York Times. If all that attention seems a little much for a 19-year-old kid who worked at a Claire’s Boutique not that long ago and made a name for herself with a track she pretty much just threw on the Internet—well, it is, but even she’d admit that. Still, Kitty’s trying to make the most of a weird situation, and has harnessed all her awkward, breathy self-consciousness into a mesmerizing new track, the almost-too-cutely named “☠DEAD❤ISLAND☠.” With the rapper’s vocals riding low in the mix, the success of “☠DEAD❤ISLAND☠” comes not from Kitty’s witty repartee—as charming as it is—but from the song’s ability to enchant as a whole. If all of The D.A.I.S.Y. Rage EP sounds exactly like this one, it could make for a bit of sparkly overkill, but for now, “☠DEAD❤ISLAND☠” suits us just fine.